The Mask That They Wore

Time Alone

“Remember cariño, if anything bad happens, call 911 and also me.”, Vale said as she headed towards the front door.

“Yeah I know mami, I'll be careful.”, Michael said as he got ready to close the door.

“You know I love you, verdad?”

“Te amo too mom.”

They shared a hug and a kiss on the cheek, as Vale said her goodbyes.Before letting go, she whispered, “Try to get that boy to open his eyes ok, he's more blind than Arnold sometimes I swear.”

Michael just laughed at his mom's Hey Arnold reference, he only got it because she practically forced him to watch a marathon a while back. Not like he actually enjoyed it or anything, who's he kidding, old shows rock. He waved as his mom got in a car and drive away. Now he just needed to wait a few minutes for Mr. Heere to drop off Jeremy and they can start their plans. He ended up not needing to wait long, since he heard a car stop in front of his house.

Jeremy was about to open the door until his father stopped him.

“Hey sport, don't get into too much trouble ok?”, Mr. Heere said.

Jeremy just smiled as he answered, “You know us, probably not even going to leave that house, only for school.”

“Yeah, I'll miss you son, I love you remember that.”

“I'll miss you too, and likewise.”

They shared a hug and Jeremy got out of the car, getting his bag from the back. He joined Michael by the door and waved goodbye to his father as he drive off. They entered the house and went straight to the basement so that Jeremy could leave his bag. Michael asked Jeremy if he wanted to go to 7/11 first so that they could stick up on snacks before their time alone began. He obviously said yes and Michael went gayly forward, as he likes to say, towards his car. As you could imagine, they bought slushies, all the different types of candy that they like, some Doritos and tortilla chips to munch, and some soda.

As they arrived back home, they out what they weren't planning in eating today in the kitchen and the rest went downstairs with them. They decided to play Resident Evil on the Gamecube taking turns everytime one of them died. This went on for a while, they sometimes switched to AOTD or Mario Party which didn't last long since they got into a very competitive mind set. They later decided to watch something to eat the snacks without the feeling of doing it fast because their turn was soon approaching. They decided to watch binge watch Super Mario Brothers Super Show, it may be bad, but it was entertaining as hell.

As episode by episode flew by, Jeremy caught himself thinking. He would look over at Michael studying his face that had the TV might casted on his face. He studied his facial expressions, how certain parts would make him smirk or how he would try to hold his laughter back. Everytime an episode would finish, he would do the little dance at the end, making Jeremy laugh every single time. Yep, Jeremy fell for a dork that probably didn't share his feelings.

He tried to push his feelings away and tried to focus on his friendship instead. As he tried to change topics in his brain, he remembered what the others were telling him for this past few days. How could Michael keep information from him? Or, how would he even have information in the first place? Maybe something happened while he was drunk and Michael just didn't know how to bring it up. Yeah, that's probably what it is.

Michael could sense that he was being watched, by Jeremy, nonetheless. He was starting to get panicky, but he decided to just dismiss it for him thinking and not knowing that he was looking his way. For a moment there, he felt that there was a change of atmosphere and everything just felt a tad sad.